Media as a Link Between Government and Citizens
Results of focus groups that the International Republican Institute conducted last fall determined that many Ukrainians were either unaware or misinformed about reforms that local oblast leaders were implementing, including the work of the governors office and the oblast administrations. In response, the IRI began to work closely with the press offices of regional governors in 13 oblasts, as well as the city administration of Odesa and the office of Prime Minister for the Autonomous Republic of Crimea as part of IRI’s local elected officials training program. The goal was to increase the effectiveness of government press offices in their communications with citizens of their regions about reforms the Yushchenko administration is implementing.
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| Deputy Governor of Zhytomyr Iryna Synavskaya opens a training seminar for press
offices of oblast governors |
The IRI assigned trainers to each of these regions to help improve public relations and communications techniques. Practical exercises regarding how to conduct an effective press conference and message repetition were also part of the training. Additional training was provided on how to organize constituent questionnaires to gather valuable research data.
A total of 239 press secretaries and media office senior staffers from 16 oblasts attended the trainings, which took place from November 9 through December 20, 2005. Among the trainers for the seminars were such prominent journalists as Andriy Shevchenko, the former vice-president of Ukrainian Television Channel 1 and newly elected member to the Verkhovna Rada and Channel 5 journalist Yevhen Hlybovytskiy.
IRI has continued to work on media development issues from the governance perspective in 2006 and plans to conduct follow-on programs to assess the success of the communication of the new programs currently being implemented at the local level in Ukraine.
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